Chris Busby on Green Committee of 100 Petra Kelly pesticides and 1995 St Georges Hill action

Dr Chris Busby on:
The Green Committee of 100 (1993-4)
Petra Kelly assassination (1992)
St George's Hill Land Reform action (1995)
Health effects of pesticides

NOT The BCfm Politics Show
thisweek.org.uk 12May23
https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2023/05/11/not-the-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-139/

Dr Chris Busby on the 1994 Green Committee of 100 protest group back in the day, part of the Green Party. The Ethics of Non-Violent Direct Action - I would like to begin with a question. If you were sailing on the Titanic and were aware of the danger of a fatal collision, that is to say, you knew that the present course and speed were dangerously wrong, how would you react? Would you try to get to see the Captain to explain your fears, your analysis? Or would you position yourself as close as possible to a lifeboat and hope for the best? Or would you, perhaps, act independently and for the greater good (and your own) and slip down to the engine room to disconnect something vital? In 1992 the nuclear power station at Trawsfynydd in North Wales had been closed for a year. The station was over twenty five years old, its planned lifespan, and the welds in the reactor pressure vessel had become neutron embrittled. The proposal was to restart it and run at a higher temperature to help make the welds more ductile. The possibilities for catastrophe were infinite: meltdown would make North Wales uninhabitable and would spread radiation as far as Chernobyl. We knew that there was some pressure brought to bear on the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. In informal conversations with anti- nuclear activists they had expressed their own misgivings and had looked to the anti-nuclear lobby to provide a back up of public support for what they wanted to do, for safety's sake, and against the background of government needs to package and sell the nuclear industry without anyone rocking that particular boat. This, then, was one particular Titanic, in 1992. The anti-nuclear groups in Wales had demonstrated in the conventional manner. People had paraded through the streets of nearby and more distant towns, chanting and carrying banners. In spite of an opinion poll which showed 56% of the constituency opposing the restart, the Green Party candidate in the General Election, fought largely on this issue, received derisory levels of support. A decision was made to act directly: all other avenues had been tried. Green Party activists chained the inner electric security gate shut, fastening themselves to it and preventing all traffic movements in and out of the station. 

Depleted Uranium ammunition being supplied by UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace from the UK to Ukraine, which will cause permanent cancer and birth defects wherever it is used. The Endless War: Iraq's Heavy Legacy of Depleted Uranium Warning: This investigation includes graphic images some readers may find disturbing. In a remote and far village, with no paved roads, and mostly mud-brick houses, 16-year-old Ahmed Daoud goes every day to play football with his friends, in a dirt yard near the palm grove on the edge of the impoverished village of Khalil Al-Husseinawi. But the boys stopped playing for several days in April 2003 because of the heavy shelling of tank and anti-aircraft positions by the Iraqi army in the orchard and around the village (south of Diyala province) to hide from US aircrafts. After the shelling stopped, Ahmad and his friends returned to play football, and the view of the damaged tanks was not worrying for them; as long as the planes would not return to the skies of the village; but what the young players did not know was that they were dying in the palm grove, in the burning tanks bombed with depleted uranium, and in the dust they inhale running after the ball. Six months have passed since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime, during which much has changed in Iraq, as well as in the village of Khalil Al-Husseinawi, where Ahmad lives with his family, while playing in that dirt arena, Ahmed fell to the ground, and this was his last reign with football, which he would never be able to kick and pass to his friends again. After many reviews of private hospitals and doctors’ clinics, Ahmed was found to have lymphoma, in a video we got from a special source in the Diyala Health Department archive, dating back to 2011, Ahmed appeared as his hair has fallen, and the symptoms of the disease appeared as he talks about his health, which is getting worse day by day, stressing that the doctors he consulted directly attributed the cause of cancer to radiation exposure. “Our areas came under American bombardment, and six months later I was diagnosed with this disease, I have left my studies, and we don’t have the money to get treated, I appeal to the government to help us and get me out of Iraq so that I can be treated”.